


Coping Mechanism

by dontworryaboutanything



Series: Abe [4]
Category: Who Killed Markiplier? - Fandom
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Arson, Suicidal Thoughts, Who Killed Markiplier - Freeform, Who Killed Markiplier?, self destructive behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 20:32:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13325958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dontworryaboutanything/pseuds/dontworryaboutanything
Summary: Prompt:maybe something about taking all those pictures with his partners and never being able to take one last picture with his last partner, if you want to-Abe isn't doing well.





	Coping Mechanism

**Author's Note:**

> (Tw: themes of suicide, alcoholism, arson, and implied self harm) 
> 
> Poor Abe.

The precinct shrink, (Obligatory, after the second one. John, with the kid. She’d be four now? Five? Would that be old enough to notice there was no two dollar bill from “Uncle Abe” for Christmas this year?) had given him the words “coping mechanism” for it. Said it was a way of mourning, reflecting, remembering. The lady even had the nerve, the nerve, to call it healthy. _Healthy_.

(“Yeah? You fucking try it, tell me its healthy then!”   
They’d sat in silence for a long minute and she didn’t comment on his whisky breath, so he swallowed and apologized.

And never saw the goddamn hack again.

_Healthy._

Fuck her.)

* * *

He wondered if fifteen partners later and wallet full if she’d still call it healthy. It wasn’t coping, it was obsession, ritual.

It didn’t help, the pictures. The daily routine of sobbing over them like a fucking child. It didn’t help.   
But it sure as hell was better than this.

What, what, what did you look like, again?

 

He didn’t open his wallet three weeks after that night. When he did, finally, the pictures were blurred with his own blood. (He had bled out so heavily he’d known he was going to die. He knew. Why was he still here? Why was he here?) He’d laughed so hard his stitches opened and the alcohol almost came back up and he woke up twelve hours later on the carpet of his shitty model room smelling like death. (Hah, he would know.)

  
He wondered, just briefly, just until you set into him again, if he could blame something beside himself. The house was cursed, that much was clear, and his curse started only a few weeks into working with Mark. (Working with Mark. Maybe that was why Mark died. But, no, Mark hadn’t stayed gone. Unrelated. All there was for Abe was gone.) But your shadows were still on the wall late at night, and no matter how he come to be damned he didn’t dare deny again he deserved it.

He’d searched for a photo of you, he’d searched. He was kicked out of the municipal building by an officer he might have recognized if he could see, but he was in blind fury, screaming and demanding when he was told they had no records for you. You were the _District Attorney,_ for fucks sake. 

(One of the others, the other crawling monsters to make it out of that house, had been taking care of everything to do with that night, rewriting reality, he found out.  
It wasn’t enough to take you physically.)

He didn’t know why it was you, that finally did it. Maybe it was just one too many. It was probably one too many.

(Or your eyes, staring in fear, trying to get the Colonel to put the gun down before-  
Or maybe it was just your eyes.  
Or maybe that he couldn’t remember their color anymore.  
Or maybe it was because you had been so damn good, in all that mess.

Or maybe it was just one too many.)

 

He didn’t sleep much. He dreamed of you, in silhouette, dying every death the rest had until you died your own. He couldn’t save you. He never saved you.

(You didn’t save him, either.  
But at least you’d tried.)

When he found out he couldn’t die, he got kicked out of his motel for breaking every piece of furniture in his room rather than just the ceiling fan, as he’d intended.

When he got kicked out of his motel, he pulled the fire alarm before starting the fire, at least.

Nobody was hurt. He found out he could scar, still, when he walked through the building to be sure he’d not fucked it up worst than he’d meant to, calves left raw and weeping after his pants caught.   
Nobody was hurt.  
It didn’t hurt.

  
He wondered if he couldn’t die because he was already dead.  
It could be Hell, if he believed in that kind of shit. Why not, now? After everything?

His wallet had been in his pants pocket, burnt with them when he finally tore them away, after watching what would happen.  
But, then, the photos had never helped. Nothing had ever helped. Nothing would ever help.

When he wanted to see you, he looked in the mirror, (not knowing at all).

He only knew he could see you in the way his eyes were haunted with you.

And he remembered all of their names.  
And he had never gotten yours.


End file.
